David Hockney: Drawing from Life review – stripping subjects down to their gym socks

National Portrait Gallery, London
From joyful sketches of old friends to a nude meeting with Picasso – when Hockney wields his pencil we see the undisguised truth
Celia Birtwell on being drawn by Hockney

When it comes to wielding a pencil, an etching needle or just a felt pen, David Hockney has no rivals. Lucian Freud’s etchings bore me senseless, Francis Bacon barely doodled, but Hockney is a graphic master. His retrospective of a life of portrait drawing is the most dazzling display of his art I have ever seen.

Forget the rants about smoking, or the personality that has always made him so lovable. Hockney here is not a star but a stare. In self-portraits drawn with a steady black line, he eyeballs himself in the mirror, mercilessly seeing lank hair and a skinny body. He draws his own eyes through the unforgiving lenses of his spectacles. It’s uncomfortable to stand close to those eyes – the sense of Hockney sizing you up is almost oppressive. This series was made in 1983, when he was still blond, but he can see himself getting older. What does the future hold? The intensity of Hockney’s self-inspection, fag in mouth, bears comparison with Rembrandt. When an artist looks so hard into the mirror, we share what they see – we are invited into the undisguised truth.

Related: Hockney muse Celia Birtwell: 'Nobody else has ever asked to draw me'

At the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 27 February to 28 June.

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